Sick cows are cause for concern

Tennessee schools – 30 districts in all – are among those left holding cases of potentially bad beef that might have come from sick or dying cattle.

To its credit, the state acted quickly last week to pull thousands of pounds of hamburger from school freezers, but it acknowledges much of it was already served to students. Nothing can be done about that worrisome fact.

This entire episode is a warning. Tainted imports aren’t the only potential danger in an increasingly industrialized food system.

The beef concerns stem from a video that shows crippled and sick animals – so-called "downer cows" – being abused and shoved with a forklift by workers at a California meat-packing plant, according to The Associated Press. The mistreatment appears to have been an attempt to get the animals on their feet so they could be slaughtered for their meat. Federal law prohibits the use of sick animals as human food.

With good reason. Animals that are too sick to stand can carry Mad Cow Disease, a rare illness that destroys the brain and can take a decade to develop, or more common food-borne threats, like e-Coli.

The precise risk posed by this batch of hamburger isn’t known. Federal officials have said there is little threat of actual illness from the beef, which came from Hallmark Meat Packing Co. and Westland Meat Co. The recall of 143 million pounds of beef, the largest ever, is called precautionary.

So far, federal investigators have found no evidence the dying animals entered the human food supply, and no illnesses that are traceable to the meat have been reported.

Still, the incident is cause for concern. Americans eat an average of 67 pounds of beef per person per year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Unless they are raising their own cattle or buying beef from a local farmer, they have to take it on faith that the federal inspection system is working and they aren’t unwittingly consuming meat from diseased animals.

In this case, the federal inspection system did not work as intended. The sick cows apparently passed an inspection before they became too ill to stand. Such animals are supposed to receive another veterinary check before being sent to slaughter, but that second inspection didn’t take place.

Two former slaughterhouse workers have been charged with animal cruelty. That should not be the end of it. It seems unlikely that two low-level workers engaged in such a practice of their own volition without the knowledge of management.

Congress has called for an even broader investigation of the meat-packing industry. We concur.

As a nation, we’ve been critical of the slipshod agricultural practices in other countries, like China. The same scrutiny should be applied to industrialized food production in this country.

If the Westland/Hallmark case is an isolated incident, the investigation will provide proof. If not, reforms are in order.

In the meantime, the increasingly popular refrain "eat local" – which refers to consumers who try to buy their food from local farmers – is looking better and better.